Williams very disappointed with Q1 elimination

Valtteri Bottas qualified 17th with Pastor Maldonado 18th for tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix. Both Williams drivers found there was not enough pace in the FW35 to progress into Q2.

The team will continue to push, both here and at the factory, to move forward tomorrow and over the coming races.

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: After winning here last year, to go out in Q1 is really disappointing for us. On such a close grid, in which Valtteri only missed out on Q2 by half a tenth, we need to be making bigger steps forward than those around us if we want to be able to show any improvement in results. Our race pace is more competitive than what we have shown today so we still aim to fight for points in tomorrow’s race, but everyone at Williams, both here and at the factory, knows that there is a great deal of work to do in order for us to move forward this season.

Valtteri Bottas, FW35-01 RS27-5421/2: Unfortunately the result from today shows where we are compared to others, but I still think we’ve made a step forward and we’re heading in the right direction. It seems everyone else has improved as well which means we are in similar position to the first four races. Hopefully we can keep making the same steps race-by-race. We will try our best tomorrow and I still think we can climb up the grid as our race pace looks good.

Pastor Maldonado, FW35-02 RS27-5447/2: We’re having a difficult time with the car at the moment, but we have been working very hard to improve things. We were missing a lot of grip which made it difficult to get a good time today. In terms of performance, we’re not there but we will keep focussing on the work needed to move us up the grid.